From the shipyards of Adelaide and Papua New Guinea to a Geelong charter for fishers with disabilities, boating has long been part of Charles Neal’s life.
Born in East Gippsland, now a Geelong resident, Charles started his apprenticeship at age 15 as a shipwright and boat builder at East Gippsland Lakes. He moved from Gippsland to Adelaide and continued boat building. Then, an accident forced him to change direction.
He injured his back in a demonstration row after winning the state championships in 1965 and was unable to walk for several months. Renowned surgeon Sir Denis Paterson performed an operation and it took about five months for Charles to learn to walk again. After the operation he moved to Papua New Guinea as a shipwright teacher-instructor at Napa Napa.
Upon his return to Australia he joined a poultry food company and attended Marcus Oldham College in Geelong to study pigs and ducks. After several years in Horsham, he returned to Geelong in 1987 where he had a vision for a great, untapped future in Geelong.
People with disabilities had never been catered for with fishing charters and Charles thought that was wrong. So he set about building a boat to do just that. Charles Neal built Corio Princess and placed an ad under his original business name ‘Geelong Fishing Charters’ in the Independent in 2013.
“The satisfaction of seeing people, particularly in a wheelchair, catching a fish for the first time on Corio Bay is something that you just can’t explain.” Says Charles
Corio Princess is the only Australian charter boat we’re aware of that has a disabled toilet.
Charles has macular degeneration, which has caused his eyesight to gradually worsen over the past 25 years. It got to a point where Charles had to lease the boat out for other people to run the tours. But he’d still get the rod out to go fishing at least once a month.
The story of how Charles lost his ‘Geelong Fishing Charters’ business name is below in the A Current Affair video. Fortunately Charles had regained ownership of his beloved boat and his boat the Corio Princess and has renamed the businesses ‘Corio Bay Fishing Charters’. He is still fighting to regain his original name.
